The Story of Beautiful Girl

Simon, Rachel. The Story of Beautiful Girl. New York: Grand Central. 2011. Print

First Sentences:

At the end of the night that would change everything, the widow stood on her porch and watched as the young woman was marched down her front drive and shoved into the sedan.

The girl did not fight back, bound and tied as she was, nor did she cry out into the chill autumn rain, so surely the doctor and his attendants thought they had won. They did not know, as the car doors slammed shut, the engine came on, and the driver steered them down the muddy hill toward the road, that the widow and the girl in the backseat had just defied them right under their noses.

Description:

Here are my kind of first sentences: ones that grip immediately and demand you continue to read until the mysteries are solved. Who is the girl and why is she being dragged away by medical people "bound and tied"? Who is the widow and what is her role in defying these people? And what is the secret the widow and girl are protecting?

Rachel Simon in her new novel, The Story of Beautiful Girl, tells the story of Lynnie, John Doe #42, Martha, and their secret: a newborn baby who is given to a stranger (Martha) one stormy night. Lynnie, a developmentally disabled young woman, and #42, a deaf mute Black man (so named as no one knows his real name), have escaped from The Pennsylvania School for the Incurable and Feebleminded. They were long-term residents.

Lynnie has given birth during their escape. Now they need a place to rest, dry off, and hide. They select a house seemingly at random, knock on the door, and are hesitantly admitted entrance by Martha, a complete stranger and elderly widow who lives alone.  

Martha, sensing their urgency, quickly gives them clothes, food, and a spot in the attic for the baby to be fed and warmed. The baby is white, so Martha feels the man is apparently not the father, but from his actions is clearly in love with both Lynnie and the infant.  

Within minutes, the doctor from the School and his staff are at Martha's door. Lynnie is seized, placed in a straitjacket "for her own safety" and shoved into a car to returned to the institution, but #42 eludes their clutches and runs into the forest. Before Lynnie is dragged off, she whispers to the widow, "Hide her," the only words she has spoken in years. The baby remains in the attic after they leave, still a secret from the School doctor. 

Martha has no idea who these people are, where they are from, their present and now their future which she has become involved. Martha must determine what to do that is best for the Lynnie, #42, the baby girl, and herself. 

This unlikely, yet compelling relationship between Lynnie and #42, as well as Martha, slowly unfolds, revealing each one's past which led to the stormy night, as well as the events that occur to each in the days that follow. By allowing each chapter to be narrated by one character then another, author Simon carefully tells very personal tales of sympathetic individuals, institutional confinement, the kindness of strangers, disappointment, and the hope of love. 

One cannot read The Story of Beautiful Girl without achieving a new awareness of a population hidden away behind stone walls, forgotten, but still possessing real thoughts, emotions, and dreams. Simon writes from personal experience. Her own sister, Beth, has an intellectual disability, and their relationship is documented in her earlier book, Riding the Bus with my Sister. 

It is a stirring book and far from a mawkishly romantic, contrived story or even simply a brutal description of institutional life it could have been. This is a solid set of circumstances and characters that make readers question their own conceptions of others and what they might do should roles be reversed and we find ourselves confronting two silent, dripping, fearful people at our doorstep one stormy night when we are alone in our house .... and then, what should we do next. 

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Stedman, M.L. Light Between Oceans  

A young couple living on a lighthouse find a rowboat drift ashore on their isolated island. Inside are a dead man and a newborn baby. Sadly childless themselves, what should they do? (previously reviewed here)

Queen of the Air

Dean, Jensen. Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love & Tragedy at the Circus. New York: Crown. 2013. Print

First Sentences:

Firelight was entering the circus wagon through a narrow open door when Nellie woke.

The orange light was jumpy, flickering. It played over the walls of the roofed wagon and its collection of costumes, trunks, hoops, juggling balls, and other props. The air in the wheeled cabin was scented with woodsmoke and meadow grass.

Description:

To me, the circus presents a conflicting experience. On one hand, it is a magical world visually and sensually of animals, colors, smells, and lights, a world populated by fantastic beings with unusual talents and masterful presence. 

On the other hand, the behind-the-scenes workings of the circus can be disquieting, almost shameful. The circus brings together the exotic, the peculiar, the poverty-stricken outcasts and caged animals to perform before audiences eager to gape at them. It is a demanding environment, as performers and animals struggle to perfect unnatural, dangerous skills. But it also seems demeaning for elephants to dance on balls, obese sideshow figures to sit on stages waving, and trained dogs to run up ladders wearing dresses.

But oh, then there are the trapeze artists. Their grace, strength, and breath-taking daring make the circus an other-worldly experience. These men and women are "godlike, artists who consecrated their entire beings to their calling, and in some cases, even risked their lives for it," according to the painter John Steuart Curry, who travelled with and painted circuses in the 1930s.

Dean Jensen, former art critic for the Milwaukee Sentinel, has written three books on the circus. In Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love & Tragedy at the Circus, he is at his best as a storyteller and researcher, bringing to life what really made up a circus and its inhabitants during the early 1900s.

Jensen focuses on the true stories of Lillian Leitzel and Alfredo Codona, the biggest stars ever to hit the circus world. Leitzel was a trapeze artist from Czechoslovakia in the early 1900s, a wisp of a girl/woman who perfected a unique move: a one-armed swing as she hung from a single rope, jerking her body 50 - 100 times in head-over-feet revolutions, all performed 70' in the air without a net. 

Leitzel's mother, only 13 when Leitzel was born, was herself an international trapeze star. Nellie performed throughout Europe with the Leamy Ladies on the "Trapezone Rotaire," a circular arrangements of trapezes that revolved overhead, which was a stupendous sensation for audiences in the 1890s. Leitzel was left alone for years with her grandparents while her mother travelled. 

Leitzel started aerial performing at age three on a small pair of Roman rings and a trapeze bar. By age 11, she teamed up with her mother as a Leamy Lady on the Trapezone Rotaire. Their act was seen by John Ringling at a performance in Berlin's Wintergarden, and they were immediately booked to join the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth in America.

Leitzel became the most popular attraction in circus history, drawing huge crowds everywhere as the star. She eventually commanded her own train car, tent, and a salary of $1,200 per week from the Ringling Brothers, an unheard of amount in the 1920s when a good car cost $400. She continued to return to the European stages in the circus off season and even appeared on Vaudeville stages in America, performing her demanding routine many times a day year after year.

Alfredo Codona, the other star of the book, was also a trapeze artist, working with his brother as "The Flying Codonas" in small circuses in Mexico before tiny audiences. He became obsessed with perfecting the feat no other flyer had ever completed: the triple somersault. 

Once he actually achieved the triple and could perform it before audiences, his skill was noticed by the Ringling Brothers who signed him to their circus that featured Leitzel. The two stars, these magnetic personalities, now were thrown into the same star-crossed orbit. What happened to them next was both beautiful and shocking. 

Queen of the Air is a wonderful book. Jensen weaves a clear story with a descriptive narration that let readers intimately understand the world of the circus and their performers. We lucky readers can breathe the big top air, watch the performances, feel the tension, and cheer the successes. We get to know and understand the motivations of these unique performers as well as the managers of the circus and the audiences who worship the stars. 

It is a gripping, fantastical tale of two people and the circus world they dominated as god-like stars. In Jensen's words:

"The story of Leitzel and Alfredo was the greatest one the big top has ever had to tell. They presided over an ever-relocating sawdust-and-rainbows-made Camelot where, one after another, wonderments kept occurring. Their love story was epic. Had it played out in the ancient world instead of the first third of the twentieth century, it might have been presented on the stage by Sophocles. Their story moved in the arc of a Greek tragedy, and, I believe, was complete with mischievous fates and vengeful gods." 

Who can resist a story as big and as personal as this? Certainly not me, and I hope not you either. It is wonderful.

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Jensen, Dean. The Biggest, the Smallest, the Longest, the Shortest: A Chronicle of the American Circus from Its Heartland

True look at the world of circuses, performers, and animals.

Helfer, Ralph. Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived 

True account of a relationship between an elephant and his friend/trainer over seven decades, from surviving a shipwreck together to performing in circuses worldwide.

Gruen, Sara. Water for Elephants 

Recollections of a 90-year-old man about his wildly varied experiences with the circus. Wonderfully written and a great fictional story.

Whale Rider

Ihimaera, Witi. Whale Rider. New York: Harcourt. 1987. Print.

First Sentences:

In the old days, in the years that have gone before us, the land and sea felt a great emptiness, a yearning.


Description:

This first sentence in Witi Ihimaera's Whale Rider perfectly exemplifies what the book will bring to each and every reader: a dreamy tone, a personification of powerful elements, and an intriguing concept that those elements are somehow feeling unfulfilled. There is the teasing hint that this story will poetically describe the reasons behind the feeling of the land and sea, the journey to address this sadness, and the resolution, whatever that might be.

I was grabbed immediately by the writing. It reads as if you were eavesdropping on the retelling of an oral history of an ancient folk legend that was a key part of the Maori people and culture of New Zealand. I just settled into a comfy chair, curled up, and let myself be absorbed by the rich narration and the musicality of the Maori words sprinkled in. It seemed a privilege to overhear this story from the words of a master storyteller like Witi Ihimaera.

The sea had looked like crinkled silver foil smoothed right out to the edge of the sky....This was the well at the bottom of the world, and when you looked into it you felt you could see to the end of forever.

The story outlines two narratives. One, of the current life of the people of the coastal village of Whangara, New Zealand. It is guided by its ancestral leader, Koro Apirana, and his granddaughter Kahu. The second parallel story recounts the legend of Kahutia Te Rangi, the ancestral Whale Rider, who could talk with animals and, while astride the back of a huge bull whale, rode from the ancient grounds of Hawaiki to settle Koro's village of Whangara. The Whale Rider is said to return someday to re-establish the Maori culture that is fast being lost in the modern world.

The village leader, Koro Apirana, a descendent of founder Kahutia Te Rangi, is concerned that there is no male heir to take over his leadership role and preserve the Maori traditions. Only Kahu, his granddaughter and a girl, is a direct issue of his blood. But as a girl, Koro feels she is ineligible to fulfill that blood destiny. He rejects her love, bars her from his school where he teaches boys the Maori knowledge, and prays that his son and wife will give birth to another child, this one a male.

But Kahu has boundless love for her old Paka grandfather and sneaks around outside the school to learn for herself the Maoi lessons before being run off by Koro. She has a sensitivity to her environment and even seems to be intricately tapped into the Maori culture.

Maybe you saw the 2002 movie, Whale Rider, based on this book. While it's a visually stunning depiction of this story. But as is the case with every movie-from-a-book, the written tale is vastly superior. The details, conversation sprinkled with Maori words, the reverence for the legends, and the power of internal thoughts makes the book deeply involving. Still, I highly recommend watching the movie after reading the book as it gives viewers a beautiful image of the people, events, and elements. And hearing the Maori language spoken is wonderful.

I highly recommend this book for his poetic style, its familiarization of Maori culture, and its strong depiction of a people striving to understand the world and people they live with while trying to remain true to the ancient traditions and history of their culture.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Goldsberry, Steven. Maui, the Demigod: An Epic Novel of Historical Hawaii   

Retelling the story of the Hawaiian gods, from the history of Maui, the Trickster. (Disclaimer: I met author Goldsberry in Hawaii while he was writing this, so wanted to give his fine book a plug. I found it a fascinating storytelling and a highly informative read. FR)

 

An American Marriage

Jones, Tayari. An American Marriage. Chapel Hill: Algonquin 2018. Print.

First Sentences:

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who leave home, and those who don't.

I'm a proud member of the first category.

Description:

Wow, wow, and yet again WOW!

It's been way too long since I've read a book that made me want to drop everything to sit and read for hours on end. Great writing, interesting story, and above all realistic, complex characters are the rewards of Tayari Jones' fourth novel, the brilliant An American Marriage. And boy, what a ride.

The story revolves around Celestial and Roy, two African-American young marrieds, one wealthy and one poor but on the rise financially. They are living in Atlanta reveling in their loving if challenging new relationship. Their future looks bright, with talk of careers and children.

It was a wonderful feeling to be grown and yet young. To be married but not settled. To be tied down yet free.

But their world is abruptly shattered when Roy is wrongly convicted of a crime and sent to prison for twelve years. .After several years, both Roy and Celestial begin to change and accept their new lives apart from each other.

When something happens that eclipses the imaginable, it changes a person. It's like the difference between a raw egg and a scrambled egg. It's the same thing, but it's not the same way at all....I look in the mirror and I know it's me, but I can't quite recognize myself.

But when Roy is exonerated and released early from incarceration, he hopes to resume their married lives together. But both he and Celestial are faced with the realities of personal worlds that have changed. Their current lives are not necessarily better or worse, but definitely changed. They cannot go back to what was reality five years ago, but are uncertain about what the future might bring. 

There are other important characters from parents to childhood friends who set examples of both good and poor relationships. They freely give opinions to Roy and Celestial on what constitutes appropriate actions for a couple or a "real man." We readers shift sympathies as we understand more about the lives of these people and the influences they have on Roy and Celestial.

Okay, that's it. Can't give away any more. It's a complex, heartbreaking, lovely, honest, and unpredictable story. It is strongly told in chapters narrated by different characters, giving their own unique perspectives to the events. Readers get inside the heads of Roy, Celestial, and others so intimately that we cannot help but share their struggles and the consequences of their decisions.

And then there is Jones' writing: always clear, strong, and tersely descriptive. Each character is intimately portrayed and given a unique voice to narrate their individual chapters, reveal their dreams, and express their fears and disappointments. These characters are definitely memorable

[Celestial] is a scotch-and-Marlboros alto. Even when she was a little girl, her voice was like the middle of the night. When she gives a song, it isn't entertaining; rather, it sounds like she is telling secrets that are not hers to reveal.

I give An American Marriage highest marks. An excellent read in every way.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Nan, Stewart. The Odds: A Love Story  

A middle age couple, at a crossroad in their marriage, want to decide whether to stay together or separate. They decide to have their fate decided by a game of dice, cashing in all their financial assets to bet on one game, with the outcome to determine their fate to remain together or move apart. Brilliantly narrated separately by both persons, letting readers change sympathies for the characters as new secrets are revealed en route to Canada and the gaming table. (previously reviewed here)

Simon, Rachel. The Story of Beautiful Girl  

A mentally-challenged white woman and deaf African-American man escape from the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded with their newborn infant  and hide in a farmhouse, helped by its owner, Martha. When they are caught by authorities, Homan escapes but Lynnie whispers to Martha, "Hide her." What transpires is the journey of Homan and Lynnie to try to be be reunited with each other and their child. (previously reviewed here) 

Brewster

Slouka, Mark. Brewster. New York: Norton. 2013. Print

First Sentences:

The first time I saw him fight was right in front of the school, winter.

It was before I knew him. I noticed him walking across the parking lot -- that long coat, his hair tossing around in the wind -- with some guy I'd never seen before following twenty feet behind and two others fanned back like wings on a jet.

Description:

For years, The Catcher in the Rye has been thrust on teens in school as the ultimate coming of age and angst novel. Now, a new contender is available and for my money, vastly superior to Catcher on every level: writing, characters, dialogue, and situations. That book is Brewster by Mark Slouka.

Brewster, New York, 1968, is the setting for this fictional memoir of 16-year-old Jon and his friends Ray, Frank, and Karen. Each has his/her own difficulties in their lives, particularly with their parents who are either devoutly religious, abusive, or prefer to simply ignore the existence of their teenager.  

Young adults dealing with these challenges as well as the usual trials of teen years is not an unusual theme for a novel. What separates Brewster from similar books, including The Catcher in the Rye, is the honesty of emotion, the grittiness of the environment, the realistic everyday challenges, and the heartfelt dialogue among these teens. They rarely reveal their true feelings to their friends, preferring to avoid embarrassment or the possibility of standing out, just as teens do in every era. But slowly, slowly, their histories and innermost thoughts and desires are uncovered. They are friends while still very separate individuals. Their shared goal is to find out what really matters, and also what does not.

Readers will strongly feel the isolation and insecurities of narrator Jon as he deals with parents who blame him for the accidental death of his infant brother and ignore him completely. He is smart, but disinterested in school and life. His heroes are Tommie Smith and John Carlos, carrying a photo of them on the Olympic platform as they defiantly raised their gloved fists. Jon's efforts on his cross-country team provide an outlet for his dogged energy and desire to prove his worth.

Ray is another story. A fighter, a loner, a problem in school who lives with his ex-cop father and comes to school with bruises from fights he takes on to earn money or stand up against an insult. The friendship of Ray and Jon, total opposites, is slow to develop but realistic in its portrayal. 

Frank, another loner and gentle giant of a kid, joins this pair for lunch one day just to have a place to sit. Little is said among them, a completely accurate depiction of boys sitting together at lunch in my experience. Eventually, new transfer Karen becomes a part of the group, particularly after she and Ray (to Jon's consternation) become an item.

So it's love, friendship, isolation, insecurity, and challenges that outline this book. But what holds it together is the writing: strong, honest, and breathtakingly memorable. Some examples?

• The coffee table was covered with bottle rings like the Olympics gone crazy;
• [after watching a father hit his daughter] It seemed acted, unreal. I'd never rally seen what people could do to each other;
• It was like something out of a shampoo commercial, only real: a wooden cabin at the bottom of a stone staircase set into a hill, a small, still lake alive with the rings of fish like a slow rain;
• [watching a woman swimming] I watched her moving under the surface, ghostly, familiar, parting the water like she was squeezing through a row of narrow windows;
• For a few weeks I went out with a girl, Abby Fisher, who had beautiful dark bangs that shone like wood in old houses;
• [on the military draft] We were all standing on a conveyer belt gliding toward a cliff, smoking, laughing, and nobody wanted to be the first to say it;
• The holidays slid by like a stone over ice, leaving nothing much to remember.

The plot is strong, real, and consuming. It is gritty, so not for the faint-hearted looking for peaches and songbirds of innocence. Giving away any of the plot away would lessen your own experience with this novel. Just grab it, sit back, and enjoy the writing and characters.

I can honestly say that this is one of the top books I have read this year, one I feel will last for many years as the most believable portrayal of teenagers facing the challenges of families, friends, and everyday life. 

Quality writing, character, and plot are still available in today's literature. Don't settle for anything less than Brewster. Get it right now and you won't be disappointed. 


Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Lewis, Michael. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game  

Very different story from Brewster, yet it tells the true events of a teen of the streets who gets a break to secure an education and a career in football.

Chbosky, Stephen. The Perks of Being a Wallflower  

Another coming of age story of life among teens, although this one is particularly well-written.

Best Boy

Gottlieb, Eli. Best Boy. New York: LIveright. 2015. Print.

First Sentences:

Payton Living Center was the sixth place in a row Momma had taken me but neither of us knew it was the one where I'd stay forever and ever..

Description:

Todd Aaron has lived in the sprawling Payton Living Center, a "therapeutic community" for over 40 years. He has a form of autism that makes him a loner and occasionally releases"volts" in his head when under stress. Todd suffered an abusive childhood with his father and brother, but now has settled into a quiet life. He is even considered a "Best Boy" at the facility for always doing what he is told, an example in the other patients who live there. 

But in Eli Gottlieb's novel, Best Boy, new changes in his peaceful life have made Todd feel the stirrings of dissatisfaction. He is terrified of a new staff member who resembles his father and wants to be his friend. Todd gets a new roommate who constantly harasses him. And then he meets a new female patient who teaches him how to avoid taking his most crushing of meds. 

In response to all of these changes, Todd has begun to harbor a secret dream of escape from the Center and somehow get back to his childhood home.

The unhappiness kept getting larger and larger till finally I was so unhappy that it was raining all the time in my head even in sunshine and wherever I looked all I saw were gray dots of water falling sideways across the view. That was how I began to drown.

Todd knows how to read and studies the Encyclopedia Britannica ("Mr. B") that his mother gave him, as well as the computer ("Mr. C") for answers about his autism, medications, and other questions. With a roommate from Hell and few other friends, Todd's life is completely solitary as he deals with the Center's rules, his fears and now his new dream escape...until the day he actually sets off on his journey home.

Gottlieb has a simple, quiet writing style that allows readers to understanding the workings of narrator Todd's autistic mind and memories. Todd is a damaged man, but one who continues to question and seek answers to his world and his past, especially those that involve his beloved mother.

This is a powerful, challenging look at the life of an autistic man, a story that is not always pretty . But Todd is a survivor with inspiring strength and unflinching will to succeed against the obstacles he faces, physically and mentally.


Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Simsion, Graeme. The Rosie Project

A brilliant but socially inept professor seeks to find the perfect mate by creating a Wife Project questionnaire, but another completely unacceptable woman shows up in his life and leads him into another project to find her unknown father via genes. Very funny as well as enlightening about people with Asperger's Syndrome. (previously reviewed here)

Simon, Rachel. The Story of Beautiful Girl

A deaf man and silent pregnant woman escape from a prison-like hospital for the mentally retarded and, before being she is caught, gives the baby to a stranger with the only words spoken, :Hide her."  (previously reviewed here) 

West With the Night

Markham, Beryl. West With the Night. New York : Heinemann . 1936. Print.

First Sentences:

How is it possible to bring order out of memory?

I should like to begin at the beginning, patiently, like a weaver at his loom. I should like to say, "This is the place to start; there can be no other."

But there are a hundred places to start for there are a hundred names -- Mwanza, Serengetti, Nungwe, Molo, Nakuru..

Description:

Beryl Markham's  West With the Night is a quietly stunning memoir about her life growing up on a racehorse-training stable in British East Africa in the early 1900s. Markham is best known as the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west (the opposite direction as Lindbergh), but this feat only accounts for one chapter of her memories.

The writing is what makes this book unforgettable, painting a spare picture of her world of lions, wild boar hunting with Murani (Masai) warriors, a fearless dog, horses, and airplane flights across trackless Africa during World War I. 

Markham's narrative is a stream of consciousness recollection of events and people in her childhood. Opening with the memory of the seemingly fruitless search in her bi-plane for a lost pilot, she interweaves comments on the landscape, animals, the deadly blackwater plague that wracks another man she encounters, and her description of the silence felt where she eventually finds the missing pilot's plane:

There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is a silence that comes with morning in the forest, and this is different from  the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt...Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo.

She makes a brief reference to a lion attack in another memory which leads to re-telling the attack she suffered as a child. This evolves into the tale of her dog surviving a nighttime abduction and ensuing fight with a leopard which incredibly left the deadly cat as bad off from the encounter as the dog:

[The dog] recovered, after ten months' tedious nursing, and became the same Buller again -- except that his head had lost what little symmetry it ever had and cat-killing developed from a sport to a vocation.

She calmly tells of the dangerous boar hunt with Murani men when only a young girl, hefting her own spear to kill one huge boar that was attacking her dog. Later, during an elephant hunt, she relates the harrowing experience of facing, without a rifle, a huge charging bull elephant.

After drought forces her family farm to ruin, she begins a new life alone at age 18 as a race-horse trainer. Starting off with not much more than the clothes on her back and her horse, she eventually builds up a respected stable of thoroughbreds to race in Nairobi and on other tracks in Africa and abroad. 

She learns the skills to pilot a bi-plane in order to avoid "roads" in that environment that are treacherous and rocky at best, and starts another life delivering goods by plane throughout the uncharted lands of East Africa. This leads to her famous, hugely dangerous solo flight from England to New York in 1932. Your heart is in your throat as she braves the dangers of night flying over the Atlantic, switching over to new fuel tanks when the engine dies and has to point the plane's nose straight down to the ocean to force start it. The first time she was less than 300 feet above the ocean when the motor finally started. Unbelievable.

There is too much of her life that Markham leaves out of West With the Night to make it a true memoir, but what she selects to write about is powerful and modest at the same time. Her respect for the culture and people of Africa shines on each page as she describes the ceremonies and interactions she has with them. Absolutely fascinating stories with beautiful, spare writing makes this memoir a gem. Highly recommended.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Markham, Beryl. The Splendid Outcast

Eight stories by Markham posthumously collected about her life in Africa and passion for airplanes, horses, and men. With West With the Night, these are (unfortunately) the only published writings of Markham and they are great.

Lovell, Mary S. Straight On Til Morning: The Life of Beryl Markham

I haven't read this yet, but am very curious to follow up on the story of Beryl Markham's life as she left so many details out of West With the Night, particularly her three marriages,affairs with Denys Finch Hatten, Tom Black, and various British crown heirs, friendship with Karen Blixen, and life after her famous flight, including the question of authorship of West With the Night..

A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940

Wilson, Victoria. A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2013. Print

First Sentences:

It has been written about Barbara Stanwyck, born Ruby Stevens, that she was an orphan.

Her mother, Catherine Ann McPhee Stevens, Kitty, died in 1911, when Ruby was four years old. Following Kitty's death, Ruby's father, Byron E. Stevens, a mason, left his five children and set sail for the Panama Canal, determined to get away and hoping to find work at higher wages than at home.

Description:

I just flat out love A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 by Victoria Wilson  - all 860 pages of it. I also love the additional 140 pages of appendices, notes, index, and the 270 photos. There, I've said it.

Admittedly, I am a fan of Barbara Stanwyck, the noted film actress of Stella Dallas, So Big, and my favorite, Ball of Fire. (For you youngsters, she also won Emmys for roles on TV's Big Valley and The Thorn Birds miniseries and played a variety of roles in her career from hard core prisoner, gun moll, gold-digger, rancher, single mother, grifter, and bombshell). 

Steel-True fills in the details of the first 34 years of Stanwyck's acting and private life; the complex, fascinating world of vaudeville, theater, and film; and the important actors, directors, writers, and family who created the era and contributed to her career. And all of it, and I really mean ALL of it, is fascinating for anyone even only slightly interested in stage, film, and life in Hollywood and New York during those formative years of entertainment.

Believe me, I never thought, even as a Stanwyck fan, I would be interested enough to conquer an 800-page biography. But this book is about more than just Barbara Stanwyck. It brings to life the world of stage and screen and the numerous factors that influence how a film or play is created. Author Wilson covers them all in a detailed, but concise description of these factors. 

Just check out the book's first sentences quoted above. In under 70 words, author Wilson, a senior editor at Alfred Knopf publishing, introduces readers to the title character, her family, her given name, the loss of her mother at age 4, her father's profession, and his departure to Central America along with his reasons. Even gives her mother's nickname. It is impossible to cram more information into the first paragraphs but equally impossible to delete any of these details. Each is critical to the big picture of Stanwyck's life and therefore deserves a place in this book. 

And it's equally impossible to stop reading since each paragraph also raise questions that need answering. "Wait, what? Stanwyck was an orphan?" "Who took care of her and her siblings?" "Did the father ever come back?" "Did they become a family again?" The next paragraphs answer those questions, but then raise new intrigues. 

It's a self-perpetuating style: set the scene, explore the people and history behind the event, follow the actions that occur, describe the repercussions and then introduce the next setting and people that flow from the previous one. You cannot help but hunger for more details, resolution to situations, actions of principal people. You are teased to continue to read on and on and on until the book is completed. Each page makes readers feel like savvy insiders to each film, knowledgeable about the nuances that make a production rise or fall. We know the who, what, where, when, why, and how of each movie, every relationship, the stage and film industries, and the world at that time ... and we want to learn even more about the next production or item in her personal life. 

The catalyst to all this historical detail is Barbara Stanwyck. By age 4 Stanwyck (born in Brooklyn as Ruby Stevens) had lost both her father (who left family to work on the Panama Canal) and her mother (in a freak trolley car accident), so spent her early childhood years shuttling between foster homes and her three older sisters. 

One sister was a vaudeville performer who sometimes took Ruby to watch performances from the theatre wings. Soon Ruby is working on her own energetic dancing act, performing in the chorus for small clubs alongside 14-year-old Ruby Keeler and Mae Clarke. She eventually landed small jobs with musical revues on Broadway. By age 16, she was a "dancing cutie" in Keep Kool and the 1923 Ziegfeld Follies, earning $100 per week while learning about dancing, shows, men, and life. She also had a botched abortion in her early teens that left her unable to have children. 

Her breakthrough performance came when Ruby, acting in a serious play as a background chorus girl with only a few lines, has her part expanded based on her voice and the magnetism she projected towards the audience. Her name is then changed by the producers to convey a more serious actress and "Barbara Stanwyck," a conglomeration of several current actors' names, was born. Her 1926 expanded role in The Noose attracted the attention of Hollywood and soon she was enticed to Hollywood during the age when silent films were first experimenting with talkies. 

Stanwyck's lush, emotional stage voice, her strong work ethic, and the varied personalities she could convey to audiences, from triumphant to ferocious to sexy, made her a popular actress for a wide variety of roles, including gun molls, prison inmates, mothers, and gold diggers. Gradually, the parts became stronger, the scripts better, and her performances more nuanced, gaining starring parts with the most famous directors of the age: Frank Capra, William Wellman, King Vidor, Cecil B. DeMille, and Preston Sturgess. 

From 1925 through the Depression years, she made $4,700 per week while other new actors made less than $40. After the successes of Night Nurse and The Miracle Woman, Stanwyck demanded $50,000 per picture, an astonishing salary for that era, making her the highest paid actress at that time. She had star power enough that she refused to be under contract with one studio as was the norm, allowing her the freedom to select her own movie roles, but also increasing her insecurity since no studio was obligated to provide roles for her. She also alienated film industry personnel by refusing to honor the screenwriters strike, continuing to make films when most other actors stopped working until writers received better pay. At one point she made 14 films in four years, including four with Capra.

But off the stage, her life was solitary. She was too shy and disinterested in the glitz of parties, choosing to spend nights at home quietly reading books rather than going out. Her marriage to Frank Faye, wildly-famous vaudeville emcee and comedian, was trying. He was the person who moved them to Hollywood when films beckoned him, but also introduced her to people who could start her with movie roles, and even financed one of her early films. His drinking, violent nature, controlling behavior, and disinterest in their adopted son strained Stanwyck's life. But she remained fiercely loyal. Even as her fame increased, she insisted on being referred to as "Mrs. Frank Faye" rather than her actress name. His abusive nature was the inspiration for the major character in the film, A Star Is Born.

Life became better for Stanwyck after her divorce from Faye and with her relationship with Robert Taylor, a $35-a-week pretty-boy newcomer to Hollywood and the leading man in one of her films. She helped him understand the nuances of roles, rehearsed his lines, created a stronger image of him, and turned him into the most popular actor of the 1930's. They had a long friendship which gave her new freedom, but she shied away from marriage. She felt:

Friendship was more powerful than love, that when one reached the heights of romantic love, there was no place to go but back, but with friendship there was a goal that could never be completely attained. It could be built upon by years of devotion, but it was always possible to intensity it; friendship grew with the years, while love can only lose....'If you could fall in love with your best friend I suppose such a marriage would come as close to perfection as marriage can come.

With Taylor beside her she finally blossomed socially, attended parties, purchased a horse-breeding ranch with her agent, Zeppo Marx, and cultivated strong friendships with Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray, Joan Crawford, Jack Benny and Mary Livingston, Wallace Berry, and William Holden. Eventually, to alleviate the public's concern over her living with a man, she married Taylor and settled into life on the ranch and in Hollywood.

Wilson extensively researched and interviewed many people from this era who knew Stanwyck as her contemporaries from the Vaudeville and early film era. Armed with this insider information, Wilson eagerly shares fascinating details about the people of that world, such as:

• John Garfield - the premier star of silent films was unsuccessful in talkies not because his voice was poor (as is usually reported), but because he slugged Louis B. Mayer for a lewd remark Mayer made at Garfield's wedding to Greta Garbo (she did not show for the ceremony). After that Mayer, as head of the studio, only gave Garfield poor roles with inexperience directors who allowed Garfield to look bad and say ridiculous dialogue that made him appear a fool and lose the love of the public;

• William Holden - could walk "on his hands along the outer rail of Pasadena's suicide bridge with its 190-foot drop" but as a new actor was terrified during the first days of shooting "Golden Boy" with Stanwyck;

• Producer/Director Darryl Zanuck - felt Stanwyck "had no sex appeal." But Stanwyck felt his criticism "had more to do with how 'he couldn't catch me,' ... than it did her allure or her acting ability. 'He ran around the desk too slow'";

• Screenwriter (at that time) William Faulkner - wrote "beautiful speeches but impossible for an actor to perform";

• John Ford, director - When told by a producer he was three days behind schedule, he "ripped out ten pages from the script. 'Now we are three days ahead of schedule' he said and never shot the sequences'";

• Stanwyck - was an insomniac who read a book a day, subscribing to book clubs, looking for stories that would make good movies for her. She gave most books away after finishing them but did collected a large number of first editions

It is not often I can recommend with utter confidence a biography that is almost 1,000 pages long. But Steel-True is totally different from other tomes of this size (cough, cough, The Goldfinch) that one feels must be read to its bitter end just because of its reputation. To me, despite Steel True's length, there is no over-writing, no dull spots, no filler chapters. At no time did I ever think to give up on this long book. To quit would mean I might miss out on some fascinating detail, the final product of the film, its success or failure, and its impact on the performers, directors, and audiences. A cliff-hanger for every paragraph ... you just have to read just one more paragraph, one more page, then one more, then one more until you are done with that film and introduced to another.

Can one person deserve1,000-pages? Of course not. But the era and people of Vaudeville, early Talkies, and later classic films around her do deserve such attention. This book is chock full of absolutely fascinating details, yet each is a brick necessary to contribute to the architecture of the world of stage, film, and the actress, Barbara Stanwyck. From her abandoned childhood, poverty, burlesque, stage, film, talkies, marriage, self-sufficiency and finally stardom, her story is marvelous to envision from the historical, theatrical, cinematic, and personal perspectives. 

And remember, since Steel True only covers Stanwyck's life to 1940 (she died in 1990), there surely will be a Volume Two to cover her last fifty years. Probably (hopefully) it will be just as crammed with juicy, fascinating details as was Steel True. 

I cannot wait.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

McCracken, Elizabeth. Niagara Falls All Over Again

Fictional memoir of one member of a two-man old time vaudeville comedy team similar to Laurel and Hardy, as they work individually and later together on their comedy act, achieving tremendous success in performances, but varying results in their personal relationships. Captivating, revealing, and tragic/funny on all levels.

Hammerstein, Oscar Andres. The Hammersteins: A Musical Theatre Family

Everything you could possibly want to know about the earliest days of theatre in America, starting with the first Oscar Hammerstein who established theatres all over New York, to his grandson who wrote the classic musicals such as Showboat, Oklahoma, The King and I, The Sound of Music and many more. Loaded with great photos of the era as well. Highly recommended. (Previously reviewed here.)